


It's Not Me

by captainbluebear



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Intrusive Violent Thoughts, Mental Illness, OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4674638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainbluebear/pseuds/captainbluebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He couldn't stop thinking about hurting them. Late at night, when the other three were asleep and Remus was staring up at the ceiling, his mind was full of images of himself, biting their necks, ripping their flesh apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is quite a heavy fic about OCD, a lot of it coming from my own experience. If after reading this you want to know more about OCD then I would recommend reading this piece by Mara Wilson (http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-no-one-tells-you-about-having-ocd/) and also checking out http://www.ocduk.org/, which has a lot of information and advice about OCD.

He couldn’t stop thinking about hurting them. Late at night, when the other three were asleep and Remus was staring up at the ceiling, his mind was full of images of himself, biting their necks, ripping their flesh apart.

Sometimes the thoughts would strike him during the day, jumping out of nowhere. He’d be putting jam on his toast at breakfast when suddenly the thought of James, on his back, his chest torn open by Remus’ claws, would burst into his head unbidden. Or he would be in herbology, helping Sirius to pot a plant, when suddenly all he could think of was jumping over the desk and tearing off Peter’s head.

The thoughts revolted him, of course. They made his stomach turn. Often when he had them one of his friends would ask him what was wrong, why he had become so pale. He tried to ignore them, force them out of his mind.

But they kept on coming. These ideas. These urges.

The wolf had been part of him for long time; for a long time he had lived with the fear that he might hurt someone he loved. But these thoughts, they were new; they were different. This was not the normal anxiety, the bubbling that rose through his stomach and took hold of his throat, when he imagined what would happened if he got out, if he ever met a human on the full moon. He had woken many times for nightmares of this kind, shaking. But these thoughts were not fears – they were invitations to a crime.

He was scared – scared that he might act on these urges, scared that he secretly wanted to do them. What if he had been corrupted, completely? What if he was a monster, not just on the full moon, but on every other day as well?

There was evil running through him, always pumping through his veins and arteries, willing him to hurt his friends.

There had always been a fundamental gulf between Remus and the world. For so long that gulf had simply been his lycanthropy, the terrible secret that he had to hide from everyone, the thing that set him apart from normal human beings. That gulf had been bridged slightly, when Sirius, Peter and James had confronted him in his second year, had cornered him in the common room and told him: “We know.” A terrible weight lifted from Remus that day – his friends knew his secret, and they still cared about him. They still wanted to be friends with him. He was a little bit closer to humanity, now he had friends who knew the whole of him.

But by the end of his third year at Hogwarts, there was a new creeping evil inside Remus. It was like poison, flowing through him, threatening to destroy those around him. He was not a good person. He was full of evil thoughts, evil images. Once again, he was set aside from the good of humanity, from the pure. He was set aside from his friends, for he had another secret, and this one he had no chance of sharing.

The bad thoughts were coming in more and more – they had escalated over the course of his fourth year, and coming into his fifth, they dominated his thinking. No matter what else he might be occupied with, no matter how much he might be engrossed in conversation with Sirius or in playing chess with James, they were always there.

At some point, he stopped being tormented solely by the bad thoughts that invaded his brain in the present. More and more, he found himself unearthing old memories, old impulses and old acts, and searching through them for evidence of his own brutality.

When he was nine, his parents took him to see his cousin and her parents. The entire meeting was strained, for obvious reasons, and when his cousin announced that she didn’t want him to touch her because “you might get half breed on me. It’s infectious you know,” he had wanted to punch her. It was not just that the thought popped into his head; he genuinely wanted to do it, to crack her face open. He had imagined it over and over on the way home. He had not thought too much of it at the time – he calmed down from his rage, and they never visited that cousin again. But now, years later, he felt intensely, overwhelmingly guilty about it. He had wanted to do a terrible thing, had enjoyed the thought of doing a terrible thing. There were more memories like this, littered throughout his childhood, times when his thoughts had turned genuinely angry and spiteful. Every one of these thoughts haunted him. He went over them, examined them, recounted them in his mind, trying to work out if he was normal, or if these were the thoughts of a monster.

Much of Remus’s time was dedicated to this introspection. Sometimes he would deliberately play violent thoughts over in his mind, going round like a video loop, just to see how he reacted, if he enjoyed it. To see if he felt the blood lust rise, the wolf inside him awaken. Sometimes the images made him cry, sometimes they made him feel sick, but he kept going. They were tests going on inside his own head, quizzing his morality. After these examinations, there was always a voice in his mind telling him that he would not have thought of those things if he had not enjoyed them, that the mere existence of these mental tests was incontrovertible proof. The voices never stopped telling him that he was in human form just as twisted and evil as he was as the wolf.

He felt sick a lot of the time. More sick than he had ever been, even after he had just been bitten. His stomach roiled with guilt over the things he had imagined. He could barely sleep or eat, and as a result got blinding headaches during the day. Often he would sit at the back of the classroom, head in his hands, pressing his palms over his eyes. Several teachers, including to his surprise the typically harsh Professor McGonagall, asked him if he needed to take an absence from class, to visit Madame Pomfrey. He always shook his head. He knew he could probably benefit from going to the hospital wing, but he could not bear the thought of it. The pain seemed like something that he deserved, and the sleepless nights were well… necessary. To go over the thoughts, to neutralise them. The thoughts needed to be argued with, to be examined. Otherwise they might leak out of his head, into the other beds in the boys’ dormitory, and hurt his friends.

The wolf sensed his anxiety of course, and became even more vicious to him on the full moon. He received more deep scratches, more bruises, more broken bones. Madame Pomfrey speculated that it was puberty worsening his full moons. Remus knew otherwise, but did not argue.

His friends noticed. Of course they noticed. They noticed in second year that he was a werewolf; they would notice in fifth year that he was afraid.

The first time one of them mentioned it, it was midway through the lunar cycle, the time when Remus should have been at his strongest.  

It was over breakfast, and Remus, sleep deprived and his stomach churning after a particularly difficult night was nibbling on some plain toast. He couldn’t taste anything; it was like chewing cardboard.

The other three had been chattering together about something (lessons? Pranks? Remus wasn’t really listening. It was like being surrounded by cotton wool), when James said, loudly and in a rather strained voice, “Peter, do you have your astronomy charts on you?”

Peter scrunched up his face, confused. “No, we don’t have astronomy today, that’s Wednesday. Why do you-“

James cut him off. “I wanted to check the lunar chart.” He looked directly at Remus. “I was wondering if there was a full moon coming up.”

“James,” Remus hissed, “We’re at breakfast.”

“Oh come off it Moony, no one’s listening,” said Sirius.

“I told you not to call me that!” Remus could feel the heat rising in his face. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He turned to James. “I know you know when the full moon is. What are you are you getting at James?”

“What I’m getting at is that you look awful Remus. You’ve looked awful for ages now, even when it’s nowhere near the full moon.” Remus shushed him again, and his face and voiced softened. “We’re worried about you, okay. All of us. Even Pete mentioned it.”

“I’m fine,” said Remus stiffly.

James snorted. “You are an awful liar.”

“I am though! I’m just… a bit sick I guess. Just a cold or something.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “You seriously want us to believe you’ve had ‘just a cold’ for months?”

“You’ve looked awful for ages Remus,” said Peter. His eyes were round and mournful, and the concern in them made Remus’ stomach turn with guilt. “We’ve all heard you, getting up in the night to be sick.”

“And we’ve seen your scars,” said James.

Remus shrunk down into his chair, pulling on his sleeves in the hope they might cover more of his arms. He glanced around the hall, to make sure no one was listening, and then said in a low voice, “I’ve always had scars. It’s nothing new.”

Sirius scoffed and James said, “Stop being so disingenuous, you know what I mean. You’ve been getting more scars, way more lately. Look,” said James, running his fingers through his hair, the stress evident on his face, “we’re your mates. We’re here for you. There’s no need to lie to us.”

Remus wanted to shout at James then, to yell that it wasn’t so simple, that he didn’t understand. Remus couldn’t tell them the truth, he just couldn’t. Not when the truth was that he was awful, evil. That his mind was full of demons.

Remus took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind and think.

“Madame Pomfrey says she thinks it might be because I’m getting older; the wolf’s getting stronger. Hurting me more.” He was scrabbling, trying to think of a convincing story. “She says it might be because of puberty. It makes the wolf worse. So it gets more violent and I get more sick.” Remus gulped. “It should get better soon,” he said, and then winced, cursing himself for saying that. Now, there would be even more questions when he didn’t get better.

The others didn’t appear to notice his hesitation. James in particular looked visibly relieved. He leant back in his chair, running his fingers through his hair.

“So, this is just temporary? You’re gonna get better?”

Remus nodded, hating himself for lying. He felt like he was going to be sick.

But James seemed to be satisfied, and if he was, the others would be too. He had waylaid the questions for now. Now he needed to fix this, to stop being so goddamn sick all the time, so his friends would stop worrying about him. He knew it was a bit silly, but he just felt like if he could be strong enough, be emotionally resolute enough, he could stop himself from getting hurt, from being ill. If he was strong enough, at the very least, he could hide his inner turmoil from his friends. They didn’t deserve to be exposed to that.

***

They became animagi, for him. He told himself that he would have stopped them, wouldn’t have let them take the risk if he had known. But they kept it concealed from until the final stages, when Remus walked in on the three of them in the dormitory, James and Peter sat on the floor, both in a fit of laughter, while Sirius sat disconsolately on the bed, his face covered in fur, his two dog ears pricked up.  

Sirius had sworn when Remus walked in, and James had shouted, “You weren’t supposed to see yet.” Then they had sat Remus down and explained what they were doing.

“We’re becoming animagi,” said James, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “So we can keep you company when you transform.”

“It’ll be completely safe,” Peter piped up. “You can’t hurt us when we’re animals. And we can really help, I did loads of research.” He pointed to the pile of books spread across his bed. Remus flinched as he recognised many of the titles from his parents’ bookshelves.

They all looked so proud of themselves. Sirius was buzzing as he explained hurriedly all the adventures they could have together. Remus wanted to protest, wanted to tell them all what a terrible idea it was. But he also desperately wanted to have company on the full moons, to have some relief from the pain of transformation, and he couldn’t bear to let down his friends who had tried so hard.

So he smiled and said thank you and encouraged them to keep going, to make it past the final stages.

 The first full moon with his friends was incredible, exhilarating. It was a wonderful thing, to realise that he could go through a full moon without tearing himself apart. He woke up the next morning with no broken bones, no bites or scratches, just a few bruises littered across his body. Madam Pomfrey had been delighted, and Remus had hushed her, saying he must have just had a lucky night.

It was a sudden and brilliant transformation. He was in less pain, and now instead of anticipating each full moon with dread, he was excited.

Of course, the guilt was there. The fear. He felt guilty for putting his friends in danger, for lying to Dumbledore, for everything. He felt terrible that his friends had gone to such incredible lengths for him, when he was so bad. He was still plagued by the thoughts; they refused to leave, and if anything, they seemed to want to punish him for his new found joy.

Every night he stayed up late, going over and over in his head, whether he should be honest, confess his awfulness. He always came to the conclusion, after hours of arguing with himself, that he should put a stop to their full moon meet ups. If he couldn’t be honest with them, he could at least stop them from risking their lives for the sake of someone so evil. But each morning he would wake up, see his friends’ faces, and think. “Not today.” He always wanted just one more day of happiness. He always made himself live the lie, just a little longer.

***

Guilt continued to consume him. Remus couldn’t help but split the world into the good and the bad, the pure and the polluted. He knew what side he was on. Every moment he spent with the people he loved was selfish, because he risked polluting them.

But still, he sometimes found himself too busy being happy to be overwhelmed with worry. Sometimes he would be laughing with his friends, joking around in common room or getting a butterbeer in The Three Broomsticks, and he would realise that he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t feel the need to monitor his thoughts, to keep his darkness in check. And, even with that awareness, he could keep on being happy. It was possible for him to just exist, unafraid. Remus lived for these moments with his friends, these flashes of normality.

***

It all had to come crashing down eventually. “The prank” or “the incident” or “that time with Snape”, as it came to be called, almost killed Remus. Quite in the literal sense; the wolf bit and tore and ripped him to pieces. He woke up the next morning covered in blood, barely able to breathe. It filled him with a sickly guilt, a turmoil that stayed even as he physically recovered.  He had had thoughts about hurting Snape, had done for years. Thoughts of ripping Snape apart with his teeth. Remus had told himself that they were just thoughts, just ideas floating around in his head that had no bearing on reality. But they had almost come true. He had almost killed Snape. If it weren’t for James, he would be locked up in Azkaban for murder. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore. He couldn’t convince himself that they were just thoughts, with no basis in reality, no relationship to him. Not when he was moments away from bring them into reality.

James said over and over that wasn’t his fault. Sirius apologised, then yelled, then apologised again. He said that he was sorry he did it and that Snape deserved it anyway and “Please forgive me Remus”. Remus did not have the energy to be angry at Sirius, not when all of his resources went to examining each and every thought about Snape he had ever had, to work out if he really wanted to hurt, if he was secretly in on it.

He didn’t have time for dealing with Sirius’ guilt; he was too focused on his own.

He couldn’t help but think that if he had suppressed the bad thoughts better, they wouldn’t have nearly come true. Maybe he was attributing too much power to himself, to his own brain. But it was hard to shake the feeling that the nasty ideas swarming around in his mind had power over more than just him. It felt like they were everywhere.

 He wrote a mantra for himself, one that he recited in his own head every night. A list of positive thoughts – I love Mum, I love Dad, I love James, and on and on, pledging not to hurt them. He hoped to convince himself that he could be good, so the thoughts would stop plaguing him. So they would not come true.

***

Seventh year came along, time trickling away in a haze of anxiety and school work. He was starting to feel better, to move on from the Snape incident. But the pressure from Newts was looming, and adulthood was on the horizon. Things were getting darker, scarier, and outside world was starting to seem just as frightening as the inside of Remus’ head.

Werewolf attacks were on the rise. They were in the news every day. James got the Daily Prophet, and often tried to keep articles about attacks away from Remus, but Remus would grab them from him and read them in all of their awful detail. He read about each and every attack, every printed word he could get his hands on concerning werewolves. It was compulsive, uncontrollable. He read those stories and tried to find similarities to himself in the werewolves within them. He studied where they transformed, how they attacked, to see if he was anything like them, if he might do anything similar. One morning he read about a sixteen year old boy, a werewolf, bitten and groomed by Fenrir Greyback to become a killer. He saw himself in the boy and all of a sudden couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. He ran from the breakfast table, knocking over his pumpkin juice and getting Peter soaking wet and sticky.

His friends followed him, but he locked himself in a bathroom stall and yelled at them to go away while he was sick.

He focused on these stories, mostly, to reassure himself that he wasn’t like those people. He’d only thought about biting people, about killing people. He’d never actually done it. He was miles away from those people.

But he’d almost done it. He’d almost bit people. He was not so far away, from these monsters. He saw pictures of them in the paper. Many of the werewolves looked gaunt, inhuman. He pitied them (because they did not deserve to live like that, to be so cast aside) and hated them (because they were killers, most of them) and empathised with them (because he was like them, in the end. He was One Of Them). Sometimes he felt like he was worse than them. He was fortunate; he had friends and a loving family. He felt like he could forgive them, though he could never forgive himself, if he were in their shoes. 

He got a curious feeling, sometimes, when he read about these attacks. He felt responsible. He knew he didn’t do it, knew he had nothing to do with it, but still he felt guilty. He felt like he was the one who committed the attack. He desperately, painfully, wanted the werewolves accused to be innocent, because he felt like his own innocence hung in the balance with every case. It made no sense; there was no logic to it. But he put himself in the place of the perpetrator, involuntarily, and his chest burned with guilt over crimes committed hundreds of miles away from him.

***

He thought a lot about Azkaban. He thought he might end up there. He thought one day he might snap and act on one of the terrible thoughts he was having, and then he’d go to Azkaban and then he’d die in Azkaban.

Werewolves never lasted long in Azkaban. The cold and the starvation and the dementors devour your soul, draining your will to live. It was hard for anyone to survive, and impossible for someone who had to go through agonising transformations every month. All werewolves who went to Azkaban died there, sooner or later, and they died slowly, gradually decaying into living corpses, before eventually collapsing and being put in the ground. .

He’d thought it out. If his obsessions ever did come true, he’d kill himself before he went to Azkaban. He wouldn’t let himself be taken down and humiliated. He would not let himself be subjected to a slow death. He would not let his parents watch him experience that fate.

He started to plan it out, in detail. He ordered in potions – potions for calm, for dreamless sleep, potions over-brewed, and discarded. Over-brewed sleep potions, or sleep potions taken in excess, could lead to permanent sleep, a sleep from which you would never wake. Remus was fond of the idea, as a way to go. Just sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.

He hid the stash of potion bottles in the bottom of his trunk, slowly adding to it.

He didn’t want to kill himself. He didn’t want to die. It was just, insurance, just in case the worst happened. It was a compulsion, like the others, something he did to allay the thoughts in his head. He would get the intrusions, the voice muttering about how he could end up being a killer, about how he could end up in Azkaban. And he could just about cope with them, by planning out what he would do in that case, by reassuring himself that he had an out. It was always meant to be a reassurance, nothing more.

Of course, everything always went wrong for Remus, and what was just a ritual blew up when James found it.

“What the hell is this Moony?” James shouted, bursting into the common room. Remus was lounging by the fire with Sirius, reading his transfiguration textbook while Sirius lazily enchanted paper planes to fly around the room, bothering nearby first years before launching themselves into the fireplace and disappearing into a puff of ash. Peter sat a few feet away, deeply immersed in a History of Magic Essay. They all jumped at the sound of James’ voice, and Remus started to shake when he saw the potion bottle in James’ hand.

Sirius looked utterly baffled. “What’s going on James?”

“I found a load of these,” James was shouting louder now, and Remus jumped at the noise, “In Moony’s trunk.”

“James, be quiet,” Remus whispered.

The room had gone eerie, silent, everyone in the common room staring. James realised, looked around, and then said, loudly, “Everyone go back to whatever it was you were doing. You didn’t hear anything.” He was staring around the room, looking menacing, but the silence persisted. “I’m head boy and I’ll put all of you in detention.” At that, all the other students in the common room turned away from James, and suddenly became very busy studying. Slowly, muttering began to fill the room.

James was red faced and breathing heavily. He turned to Remus, Peter and Sirius. “You guys should come up to the dorm. So we can talk.”

“James,” Remus began “There’s nothing to talk about-“

“Moony,” James sounded so sad, so tired, and Remus knew he had to talk about this now; he had no choice.

They marched to the dorm in silence, and once the door had swung shut and they were alone Remus spoke.

 “I don’t want to hurt myself,” he explained, his limbs trembling. He was staring at the floor; he couldn’t bring himself to look at any of his friends. He was overly aware of their movements, despite not looking. He could hear James’ heavy, even breathing. Peter’s breathing on the other hand, was shaky and laboured and Remus could tell that he was freaking out.

Sirius was holding his breath.

“Why do you have all that stuff then?” It was Peter who broke the silence, and Remus looked up at him, surprised. He was pale and chewing on his upper lip.

“It was just… in case I needed it.” Remus realised it made no sense, realised there was no way he could properly explain it. It was illogical, irrational.

Sirius furrowed his brow. “Why would you need it? Why would you ever need to kill yourself?”

Those words, “kill yourself”, sent a shiver through the room, and Remus felt like he might faint, or maybe explode.

“It’s j-j-just,” he stammered. He didn’t know what to say. How could he explain this?

“I just, worry, a lot. I get scared sometimes, that everything’s going to go terribly wrong, that people I care about are gonna get hurt and I’ll have no choice but to-“ He couldn’t finish the sentence. He gulped. “So much is going wrong, with this war. All these attacks and people are dying and soon we are going to be right in it. I got scared and I just felt – safer, I guess, to know I had a way out, in case everything went wrong.”

It was an approximation of the truth. It didn’t explain why he was truly scared, the fears that his own evil might one day overtake him and then he would have to destroy himself. But he hoped it would make them understand. He was scared. Not suicidal.

“So, you don’t actually plan on doing anything? You don’t actually want to?” James said, slowly, disbelief in his voice.

Remus shook his head vigorously. “No I swear, I never wanted to, I’m not planning to. I just, felt better with it there, as insurance.” He looked down at the ground again. His eyes were filling with tears. He cursed himself as he wiped his eyes on his sleeves. He felt so stupid, talking to them like this.

“Hey mate, it’ll be okay,” said Sirius, in an overwhelmingly unconvincing voice.

Remus snorted. “Yeah, sure it will.” He didn’t feel sad or scared saying this; if anything, he was suddenly amused by it all. He let out a half chuckle, then stopped when he saw the look in James’ eyes.

“I’m not going to hurt myself,” he said, and the look on his friends’ faces made him realise how harshly he said it. He softened his voice as he said: “Really, I’m not in any danger, you don’t have to worry about me.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “We always have to worry about you Moony. You tear yourself apart every month.”

“OK, fine,” said Remus, shaking his head, “But you don’t have to worry about this. There’s nothing to worry about.”

The three of them clearly didn’t believe him. There was an exchange between the three of them, a look, before Peter piped up and said, “So we don’t need to tell Professor McGonagall?”

“No,” Remus nearly shouted, “You don’t need to tell anyone. That won’t help with anything.”

Remus was sure at that moment that James wouldn’t believe him, that he would march off in that instant, find McGonagall, Pomfrey, anyone, and tell, give his secret away.

But instead James just stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, before slumping down on the bed. “Okay,” he said. Remus was not exactly sure what he meant by that.

James and Peter vanished all of his potions. They didn’t do it in front of him; Sirius dragged Remus downstairs, insisting they go and walk outside, even though the grounds were frosted over. When Remus returned he found his stash, his safety gone. He didn’t dare replenish it, for he saw all of his friends, James especially, watching his every move, for any hint that he might try something.

He had panic attacks, and his mind seemed to be in meltdown all of the time, but in a way he was grateful James had found the potions. It was one less thing to hide.

***

Graduation was solemn and bitter and the four of them drank far too much and laughed too little. They knew that darkness was coming for everyone, and they would no longer be safe in school, tucked up in the Scottish mountains where no death eaters could reach them. Remus was especially morose, drinking bottle after bottle of firewhiskey and barely speaking. His time of normalcy, to play at being a normal human, had come to an end. He would have to face his darkness now.

A few days after graduation, Dumbledore called the four of them, along with Lily and a few other students, to meet in his office. He talked about terror, about dark times and banding together. He told them about the order, and invited them to fight. James and Sirius were overjoyed at the prospect, Peter terrified but solemn in his acceptance. Remus could barely breathe. There were voices in his head, screaming about how dangerous he was, about how much he would hurt the order, corrupt them. But his friends were at his side, so he nodded.

 ***

Sirius didn’t trust him. Remus didn’t trust himself.

He couldn’t believe anything anymore.

Everything was scary and awful and everyone around him was in danger. The world was falling apart. He shouldn’t have felt so okay.

He felt better, better than he used to. He had a purpose now, a goal. He was important to the order. He was a werewolf and the order needed werewolves, desperately. The thoughts were there, but he could push them aside, for the most part. He had work to do, and the thoughts could wait.

He didn’t have to feel guilty, to be around other members of the order. Because he was needed, and so there was a justification, for him to spend time with people. He was allowed.

***

James and Lily were dead James and Lily were dead James and Lily were dead dead dead dead dead

And Remus didn’t kill them but he knew he did, he knew this was his fault somehow. He might as well have killed them.

 He thought about what it must have been like, to kill them. He could hear James and Lily screaming as if he had been there himself. Sometimes he got confused and couldn’t trust his memory. Sometimes he thought it was genuinely his fault, sometimes he was so hazy and messed up that the thought that he did was is too real, too true, burning up his consciousness and he couldn’t deny it, no matter what he logically knew. They were eating him. Devouring him. He was unemployed and unloved and had all the time in the world to think. He had no one to cling on to, to fight for. All he had were thoughts swarming in his head. He clung to them, and let them torture him, because it felt like they were the only thing to shelter him.

***

Every moment he spent at Hogwarts was agony; the guilt and the pain and the whirling terror that he might hurt one of his students. But he loved it, loved the feeling that he was helping people, giving the children in his care confidence, helping them grow. Whenever he saw Neville Longbottom successfully cast off a dark being and beam with pride, he was filled with a warmth he hadn’t known he was capable of feeling.

Snape was at the periphery, always reminding Remus, never letting him relax into the belief that he might be good. But Dumbledore believed in him, and his students did to, and though Remus couldn’t shake the feeling that he was deceiving them, it made him feel safer.

***

The laws were getting worse and worse and Remus was getting poorer and poorer, and was very soon to be homeless. Ever since he left Hogwarts he had been unemployed, and was just barely living on what he had saved out of his wages during that year.

He was sitting in his small, filthy flat. Dolores Umbridge smiled at him with her toad face on page twenty-two of the Daily Prophet. He screwed up the paper and threw it on the fire.

He hated her with every fibre of his being.  He had a hundred different curses for her, and people like her.

Part of him thought that she might be right. That she was doing him a favour, by keeping him away from normal people. Now he didn’t have to rely on his own weak will to prevent him from harming real people; the law would do it for him.

***

Voldemort returned, so the order returned. Suddenly Remus had a place and a purpose again.

They went on missions together, him and Tonks. Again and again he found himself scheduled to work with her, to track down leads, stake out a death eater’s home. More often than not they would end up back at Grimmauld Place after their shifts were over, just for a drink and a chat. She was the funniest person he had ever met, and he could have kept talking to her forever. She seemed to like him too, to enjoy his company. She laughed at his jokes and listened intently to his stories and would always look slightly put out when they had to part.

Sometimes, when it was late at night, just the two of them, the conversation would get deeper. They talked about the war, about their fears and their grief. Tonks would talk about her darkness, which hovered at the back of her mind, a dark cloud that always just around the corner. She sounded a bit like Sirius then, and she would even say “It’s an occupational hazard of being a Black, I guess.”

Moments like this always made Remus want to confess to his own dark thoughts, to bare himself and be as honest as she was. But there was always something holding him back, this fear that the truth might destroy everything. So instead he would nod, and tell her he understood. He told her he felt a darkness too, though he didn’t explain that his darkness was so different from hers.

***

He was falling for her, day by day. He knew it was nothing, knew he wasn’t good enough. He knew he couldn’t be close to her, lest he corrupt her. Because she was bright and kind and good. She was overflowing with life, and how could he dare to touch her, when he was made from suffering and death?

But they stayed up late together, went on almost-dates together. (“We’re just going for drink,” she would say, but she didn’t suggest inviting anyone else, and neither did he). He tried his hardest not to, but he fell in love with her.

He kissed her, one night, and it was the most overwhelmingly wonderful thing in the world, and it tore him apart with guilt, because he knew she was only kissing him because she didn’t know how evil he was, how dirty.

The compulsion to run, to pull away, was with him every day. It told him that the voices in his head, the ones saying “kill, kill”, were real, were him, and the only way he could truly love her, the only way he could protect her, was to leave.

He resisted, because he loved her. Because he was selfish. Because he wanted just one more night at her side.

***

Every time he closed his eyes he could see Sirius falling.

Tonks sat down next to him, on the sofa in Grimmauld place. She took his hand and told him “I can’t stop thinking about it either,” and then, “I miss him so much.”

He moved his hand away. 

***

The journeys Remus was going on were suicide missions, and he intended them that way. He relished them, the thought that he might die in service of something better. He could take himself, the danger of himself, out of the world and help the order in the process. Sirius was dead – Sirius knew him and accepted him and Sirius was dead. The people who knew the dreadfulness of him always left. It was a sign.

 Remus couldn’t help but feel to blame, couldn’t help but think if only he had been better, if only he had followed the rules, Sirius wouldn’t be dead. He felt like he is the one that cast the spell that pushed Sirius through the veil.

It was always his fault.

Death was his just reward.

There was a darkness inside him, leaking out, seeping into the people around him, hurting them. He tried to stop it, but it was hard. He thought it would be easier, so much easier, to die in battle. Then the darkness would be trapped, wrapped up in his corpse and buried in the ground.

It was also a distraction, something to monopolise all his attention. He was always good at duelling, but now he chased down death eater after death eater, infiltrating death eater lairs for information, going undercover in werewolf settlements. He had a focus like no other. The others were starting to look at him oddly, with fear, with admiration. He was proud of the work he could do; he put everything into it, and it helped him cope.

 ***

He wouldn’t talk to her anymore; he couldn’t talk to her. He had been close to Sirius, and now Sirius was dead. He wouldn’t get her killed. She was too bright, too precious.

She deserved more than him. She deserved someone who wasn’t corrupted, who wouldn’t pollute her life just by his presence.

The missions he went on were good excuses to avoid her, but when he got back she would corner him, yell at him, for putting himself in danger.

“You look awful Remus, you need to stop,” she would say, and it would take all his strength not to snap back that she didn’t look that good either. She was pale, her hair was limp and brown, and he knew part of it was due to worry for him. He wanted to scream at her to stop caring, to stop worrying. He wasn’t worth her; she shouldn’t be in pain over him.

He hugged her once. He hugged her and told her that he loved her but he couldn’t, he wasn’t good enough. They couldn’t be together. When he drew away he saw the tears in Tonks’ eyes and realised he had made a terrible mistake. He should have lied.

***

Molly sat him down one night, and lectured him. Remus didn’t speak the whole time, couldn’t formulate words.

“I’ve seen the way you look at her. I know you love her. Why are you doing this to yourself, to her?”

“This is killing her. She’s already going through so much, and she has to deal with watching the man she loves run off trying to get himself killed.”

“Stop this.”

***

The night Dumbledore died was the night Remus realised.

He kissed her and it felt terrible and it was worth it.

***

When he discovered she was pregnant he was haunted by the thought of hurting the baby, of killing it in its sleep. Of letting the child live, but passing on his terrible curse. The horrible, terrible thoughts plagued him and he hated them and he fought and he could not make them leave.

He ran.

He came back.

He shook, for coming back. He couldn’t stand the horror of what he’d done, exposing her to him.

She found him crying and she asked him why and shaking and in whispers he told her. He could barely stand to, but once he started he couldn’t stop. He was in confession, begging for absolution. He was hoping that if she could know all the evil of him and forgive him then it would be all right.

She surprised him. She always surprised him.

She kissed him gently and she said, “Me too.”

He was confused. He was trapped in a deep pit and could not see the sun and he didn’t know what she is saying.

He asked her to explain.

“I get those thoughts too.”

He was staring in awe and silence and there were tears on her face and tears on his and then she was hugging him and telling him, about all the awful thoughts she had, all the intrusions that plagued her, the dirty thoughts and the cruel thoughts, and how she thought she was evil, until she found out she wasn’t.

“We’re not evil,” she tells him. “Some people just, get bad thoughts, jumping into their heads. Not because they are bad, not because they want bad things. Just because. It just happens.”

Tonks was like him. Tonks was like him, had the same thoughts and she was not evil. He knew she wasn’t evil, knew she was the most wonderful person, in the world, in his life. 

 

It should have been a eureka moment, when the skies clear and he knows and he is cured.

It was a change, it was a huge shaking relief and he kissed her and kissed her and cried because he had shown himself, his whole self, to someone for the first time and she did not think that he was evil. But he struggled to believe her. The darkness inside him felt too fundamental, too real, to be a trick, to be his thoughts deceiving him. But still, she knew and she loved him. Tonks – bright and bubbly and passionate and moral Tonks - still loved him. The lie had gone from their relationship and she still loved him. Maybe he couldn’t believe himself good, but she did, and maybe that could be enough.

Enough to keep him there. Enough to make him proud, to be married to her, to be a father. Enough that he could cope and keep living and not be consumed.

***

The day his son was born, the fear remained. It terrified him to hold Teddy, and he would not do so if Tonks wasn’t watching. Teddy was so good, so perfect, and Remus couldn’t stand it, the thought that he had forced this child to have such an evil father.

 But Teddy was the most beautiful thing Remus had ever seen; he was healthy and whole and Remus couldn’t help but be warmed by his presence. He couldn’t help but bask in it.

The thoughts, the obsessions, they pushed at the corner of his mind. But today, just this day, Remus decided that he would not look over; he would not examine them. He decided enjoy the sight of his son, and knowledge that he helped created something so beautiful. Remus thought he was impure, thought he was bad, but he helped create Teddy.

That had to count as evidence in his favour. 

 


End file.
